Naval Etiquette
by Swiss Army Knife
Summary: A furious fleet admiral gets savaged when he stumbles upon a certain occupant of a captain-less Surprise. Fortunately, Stephen is a mermaid.


Author's Note: A product of re-reading Patrick O'Brian's wonderful series. Written because no matter how mortifying the catastrophes Stephen gets himself into, he always manages to get himself out again.

 **Naval Etiquette**  
Swiss Army Knife

* * *

First Lieutenant Tom Pullings did not consider himself a very quibbling kind of man. In general he found that life was either benignly satisfactory or really quite good. There were exceptions certainly. There were also screaming, bloody nightmares, and at current what had started out as quite a trying day had slowly dissolved into a kind of quivering, desolate hell.

He tried again to explain. "I'm very sorry, Sir, but the captain is away. We pulled through some heavy weather, and he's gone to negotiate the cost of repair personally. We got in ourselves only yesterday."

Admiral Burland's fleet of ships had appeared on the horizon like phantoms with the morning fog, and when the ' _captain report aboard flag'_ signal had gone up, it had been met only by an apology and a message sent with explanations as to why they could not leave their anchorage and come to formation, no matter how great the seniority behind the request. The admiral, a creature as brutish and temperamental as a bison, had taken it poorly. However, even a personal intrusion could not change the current reality.

"Can't you summon the attention of your own captain?" Burland raged, bellowing directly into Pullings milk-white face, the scars standing out lividly against the pallor.

In truth, the _Surprise_ didn't have the ability to summon the attention of a rabbit without great risk to the crew and ship. Pullings had sent a messenger, and _Blessed_ , the flagship, had fired a gun. Beyond that, there was nothing else that could be done. If Pullings could have scrapped up any amount of dry powder and had a workable gun, he would have put himself in front of it. As it was, his fingers were leaving indentions deep in the rim of his hat, which he held tightly over his bosom as though he though it could shield him.

Red faced, vein pulsing, the admiral looked out over the pounding sea, which was still as rough and tempestuous as it could ever well be. Which is perhaps why he fixed his globulous, apoplectic eye on Pullings and said, "I shall give you captain half a glass to make his appearance. Until then, I shall wait in the cabin. Send in something to drink, if this tub can manage even that courtesy."

Frothing as he was with fury and power enough to ruin them all with a word, no one dared stand between him and his destination. By the time it occurred to anyone that the cabin was currently occupied, it was really much too late.

* * *

There were no lights in the cabin, leaving it swathed with deep shadow and the creaking of a ship at harbor. It was also damp, with obvious damage to one wall. However, something like livability had been restored, at least to one who knew their way around. Admiral Burland had only heard of Jack Aubrey, and had certainly never been in his cabin. Thus he cursed and tripped in the darkness, and the hanging bundle he clamored into came as a complete surprise.

As was the livid, pale-eyed creature with which he found himself entangled. The man came flailing out of the hammock, only dimly awake. At first, the admiral was too preoccupied with regaining his awkward footing to hear the stream of profanity rolling out of the disturbed sleeper. Only when some of the expletives passed beyond even Burland's immense vocabulary – shocking indeed – did he realize that not everything was in English. This brought back all the outrage a bungling little captain-less brig and a roaring headache could summon, and his ire rose again to its full, crimson crescendo.

Reaching out Burland took hold of the hopelessly tangled enigma and yanked him up by the shoulders. He got a brief impression of savage, bleached eyes before he felt a sharp pain in both wrists and found himself wringing them, wondering how his capture was now on his own feet, looking awake and impassioned and ready to kill.

"Why, you great clumsy bastard," Burland began, throwing his bulk around. "You _foolish, insufferable_ –"

The little man did not seem impressed by Burland's own show of language and interrupted his flow with a finger in the admiral's midsection that shocked him so much he closed his mouth and stared with wildly astonished eyes.

"You touched me," he said, as though he couldn't quite believe it. His face reddened. "You would _dare_ put a hand to _me_!"

The unknown man hardly seemed intimidated by the size or rank of the intruder in his midst. "You, Sir," he began, "have woken me from my sleep – my well deserved sleep – and then you come in here and ramble on –" In his deep indignation, the man seemed to have moved to French, of which the admiral did not possess enough to follow.

Bewildered by this unprecedented situation, Burland blurted the first thing that came to him: "You are not the captain!" It was half a question.

The man looked at him disapprovingly for a long moment and then said coldly, "The captain is out. You will find the door behind you."

He was being ordered out? It was ludicrous. "Do you know who I am?"

"I don't give a – who you are," was Stephen's offhand response.

Burland actually felt himself sway as his headache spiked, and his anger flew with his pain. " _You, Sir –"_ he started, fully intending to cut the man down, figuratively if not literally.

But the man interrupted him again, taking a step closer and peering up into his face with such a neutral, wholly disinterested gaze that the admiral stopped mid-sentence and tried to met the eyes of this puzzling animal. "What?" he finally grunted, though that too was ridiculous.

He was released from the reptile gaze. "Your head is hurting you," the man said, and Burland blinked at him dumbly as he moved to the other side of the cabin, digging around in a case. "How long have you had a headache?"

"Weeks now," he heard his own voice rumble. It felt like he had completely lost control of the situation, but he couldn't determine exactly how it had happened.

"It's a wonder you're walking around at all, and all that shouting." Burland wasn't at all sure he was being spoken to, but the next moment a bottle was being pressed into his palm and he felt himself being lead gently to the door. "You'll take that at every meal and once before bed until the symptoms pass; just a dose and don't you go doubling it if you know what's good for you. You should lie down immediately, or I will not answer for your health."

Such was his bleary confusion as he was about to be pressed out the door that Burland only just remembered to pass on a message to Aubrey.

"The captain?" The man first looked as though he had forgotten the word's meaning entirely. "Oh. Who shall I say called on him?"

"Admiral James Burland, if you please."

* * *

When Jack finally returned to his ship, he was panting and exhausted from the mad run to the dock and from bailing water out of an only marginally seaworthy vessel. He had heard the gun, of course. He had been startled to hear it, as his own ship was incapable of such show for the moment. A quick eye to the sea had made the situation clear, but distance was distance and returning had taken time.

Heaving himself onto the deck, he meet the collective faces of his men, all caught in a rigor somewhere between horror and awe. Their expressions hit a chord of panic deep within his bosom, and he looked to his first lieutenant for an explanation. Desolate, Pullings didn't seem capable of speech, and Killick had a look on like death.

In what would ordinarily have been quite a commanding voice, he asked quietly, "What's all this?"

Finally, seeing Pullings horror to be too great, a little midshipmen holding his hat, stammered, "If you please, Sir, the doctor –"

It was like sinking through a hole into the sea. Remembering to breathe, he rasped, "I see. The cabin?" Nods, but not reassuring ones. He left them behind, hobbling toward the inevitable.

Stephen was waiting for him, sitting in the sunshine of one of the windows. "Jack," he said as his friend closed the door and came beside him. "I'm afraid I may have made a great breech in naval etiquette."

Jack was almost afraid to ask. "What happened?"

"I was sleeping – I was up all night with the invalids, you know, and Bonden was good enough to rig me a hammock – when this great, blundering brute broke in upon the cabin and ran into me in the dark. Now I know it is a very great discourtesy, even a crime, to enter a captain's cabin when he is absent, so of course I demanded he make account of himself. Why, then he flew at me, raking me up and down with curses, and I discerned he was angry at me – at me!" he repeated. "Well, I'm afraid I let my temper get the best of me. I ordered him out. It was only as he was leaving that he told me you were to report to him directly upon returning, and when I inquired as to whom I should say the message was from, why, he said he was an admiral."

Jack felt the need to sit down.

"Now it occurred to me that an admiral is above the rank of a naval surgeon, strictly speaking," Stephen was continuing. Yes, so far above it was almost unfathomable. "And I'm afraid I may have been remiss. There, you are angry with me now."

Jack was struggling to breathe evenly. Part of him wanted to rage, to shout, but Stephen had a way of looking so pitifully rebuked when he realized he'd done something wrong that he couldn't find the heart. "You ordered out the admiral."

"Yes."

"And he left?" Stephen shouldn't be sitting in this cabin. By all good reason, he should be in irons.

"Sure, he left," Stephen answered. "I gave him a comfortable dose and sent him to rest. He was looking very poorly indeed."

There simply weren't words.

* * *

Jack wasn't at all sure what to expect of his visit to the flagship. But upon arrival, he was ushered immediately into the cabin and offered a seat quite kindly. The mild faced admiral laid before him the orders that had precipitated down to him from Whitehall. An hour passed without incident over these purely nautical details before a pause in the conversation allowed Jack to mention what he could no longer stand to let lie.

"Sir, about my surgeon," he began.

"Surgeon?" Admiral Burland looked genuinely confused, but then the corners of his mouth twitched up just at the edges, and he chuckled. "Ah, yes, the feral spitfire you have guarding your cabin. Abused me something terrible, but he cured my migraine, so I think I'll forestall flogging him around the fleet, eh, Aubrey?"

"Yes, Sir," Jack answered, pale with gratitude.

"Who is he, anyway, and what was he doing there?"

"He is Doctor Stephen Maturin, my particular friend and a sort of messmate."

"Messmate?"

"Yes, in that he comes and goes generally as he pleases, regardless of invitation. I'm afraid he's not a very nautical animal and doesn't realize how wrong his behavior might be at times."

"I see," Burland said thoughtfully. "Well, one thing I'll say for him: he's no coward."

"No, sir, I'd dare not call him shy." After all, Jack had met the man expecting him to back out of a duel. However, Stephen never backed out of anything to his knowledge, expect perhaps the forward crosstrees. He added, "He's a very great friend and a very great doctor. I'm glad you're feeling well." Gladder that Stephen was well, but he bit his lip.

"A very great doctor, indeed. I've seen so many doctors about my head it's incorrigible. But that aside –"

A few more words back and forth, a few more papers exchanged, and then Jack was

being walked to the door with all the goodwill in the world. As he was about to leave, Admiral Burland called out offhandedly. "And Aubrey, send over that Maturin fellow at his convenience. I should like to consult with him before we part company."

Being rowed back to the ship, marveling at their fortune, Jack could not help but shake his head wonderingly. _'My dear Stephen,'_ he thought. _'You are a marvel.'_

* * *

Stephen was waiting for him when he returned to the cabin. The lamp had been lit and Jack came up behind him and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "Did you know, earlier today I came very close to breaking one of my first promises to you."

"Which?"

"That you would never be flogged."

When Stephen paled, Jack chuckled, "Don't make such a face. It all went along in the end. Although were it anyone but you I think I'dve all carried away."

Stephen was recovering slowly. "Well, I am very brilliant."

Jack reflected on that for a moment, thinking of the many sorts of people – diplomats, politicos, agents, intellects, soldiers, and so on – who all looked on Stephen so friendlily and against all observable reason. Stephen had a way of standing above the class distinctions of ordinary human beings. Jack smiled to think of the sailors' explanation: that Stephen was a mermaid or some other creature outside of nature; almost an innocent, who didn't know right from wrong. He thought perhaps it was that endearing quality which might have secured today's respite as much as his brilliance, aha.

However, he didn't think Stephen would appreciate the description of himself as a mermaid, so Jack just said, "Sure, that must be it," and subdued, moving to his chair and sinking into it as grateful and limp as though he'd weathered a storm.

Omniscient as always, Stephen called for coffee. While they waited for it, he spoke quietly. "I really am sorry, Jack."

His companion smiled. "You are a creature of your nature, brother," he said, "and I wouldn't change that for the world."

* * *

That night, talk of the day drifted through the crew:

"The doctor savaged the admiral, and he was set to have the tar beat out of him and disemboweled too, but he exorcised a demon right out of Burland's head and instead the man walked right out as meek as a lamb."

Someone commented, "I didn't know surgeons could cast out demons."

"Which of course they can, you stupid blockhead, or at least ours can. He once roused out ol'Plaice's brains easy as kiss my hand, and the demon was in his head, wasn't it?"

"I wish I could have seen it," one voice lamented.

There was a murmur of ascent, it being generally agreed that out of courtesy all marvels by the doctor ought to be done in open air and plain sight.

"You can't exorcise a demon but in the dark," Killick asserted, but by that time no one was listening.


End file.
